Join us on 24th May as we march on the UEFA Annual Congress to demand UEFA not hold the European Under-21 championships in Israel this June, and kick apartheid Israel out of UEFA and demand the immediate release of the Palestinian footballers Mohammed Sadi Nimer and Omar Abu Roweis who are still languishing in Israeli dungeons.

Omar Abu Roweis was the goalkeeper for the Palestinian Olympic Team, whilst Mohammed Sadi Nimer, a former player on the Palestinian National team, plays for a football club in Bethlehem. Both footballers were abducted by Israeli soldiers in February 2012 raids on their homes and have been tortured at Al Moskobiyeh interrogation centre in Jerusalem. Mohammed Sadi Nimer is currently held in the Negev at Ramon prison.

Another Palestinian footballer Zakaria Issa, who was detained in Al Ramla prison, died soon after his release due to medical neglect during his incarceration. Football players Ayman Alkurd, Shadi Sbakhe and Wajeh Moshate, as well as over 1,400 other Palestinians in Gaza, were killed and the Rafah National Stadium was destroyed during Israelís 2008-09 onslaught on Gaza. The stadium had previously been destroyed in 2006, and again destroyed just last year in 2012.

Mahmoud Sarsak, a young footballer from Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, who had played professionally for the Palestine National Football Team, was abducted by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint while on his way to join a football club in Balata refugee camp in the West Bank. He was imprisoned and tortured by Israel for over 3 years without charge or trial. He only won his freedom last July after 96 days of hunger strike. Upon his release he has called for a sports boycott of Israel:

"I call on all those who spoke out for my release and the release of the Palestinian hunger strikers, to once again show their commitment to justice and equality by insisting that UEFA move their competitions away from Israel. The cultural and sporting boycott and other forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) were vital in the fall of the South African apartheid regime, and similar initiatives will be vital to ending Israeli apartheid."

We will be joining the European Football United Against Apartheid initiative, with the march starting at 12 noon outside St Pancras station and culminating at 2pm in a rally outside the UEFA Annual Congress at Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. People coming from Jummah prayers can head straight for the rally which should continue till after 4pm.

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Live updates during protest

We will, inshAllah, be tweeting live from the march and rally with live photos being uploaded to our facebook page. So if you can't join us on the day, please help us by sharing the photos as they get uploaded.

The Palestinian Prisoners Campaign aims to raise awareness for the plight of Palestinian prisoners and build solidarity for their struggle and work towards their freedom. The campaign was launched by Innovative Minds (inminds.com) and the Islamic Human Rights Commission (ihrc.org) on the occasion of Al Quds Day 2012 (on 17th August 2012), since then we have held actions every fortnight in support of Palestinian prisoners, if you can spare two hours twice a month then please join the campaign by coming to the next action.

"You cannot simplify the question of violence.. You look at human history - the American revolution, the civil war, the end of slavery in the United States, the African National Congress, the end of colonialism - by and large these were some combination of popular social uprisings and social movements and non-violent protests AND armed resistance. Now that doesn't mean I'm advocating for any armed action today, I'm not. I'm committed to finding ways of acting and speaking and making people laugh and doing art and disrupting the war machine in other ways, but I think focusing on violence when we have the comfort of being protected by mass of armed violence is not non-violence at all.. if you are pointing to the mass of violence and who's doing the mass of violence in the world today, you have to look to state violence - that's people bombing whole cities from the air.. "